While I was onstage at a festival a few Australian tours ago, I mentioned that I’d be driving from Sydney to Melbourne a few days later. After the show, a gangly Canadian named James asked if he could hitch a ride with me. I was happy to have someone to share the drive (and the cost of gas), so I said yes.

Justin, a musician I had met at the festival, suggested James and I stay at his surfer shack. It was located about halfway to Sydney, off the main highway, near a great beach. I thought that sounded pretty grand, and so Justin proceeded to draw us directions from the highway to his shack, which he said was “rustic but beautiful.”

We were on a dimly lit pub patio, so he drew the directions on a series of serviettes, which seemed like a perfectly practical navigational system at the time. He even sketched a picture of the shack. He said he’d ring his neighbour to leave a key out for us, shading in the drawing with a great amount of artistic attention.

The next day James met me at my hotel, and we were off. The trip began with my incorrect assumption that driving time for distances in Australia is same as in Canada. Most of the highways down under go right through the towns in a series of roundabouts which you have to slow down to crawl through. That, combined with insane traffic due to the 2006 Commonwealth Games, meant our plan of getting to the shack by early evening and enjoying the beach was sabotaged.

Nevertheless, when we stopped briefly for snacks, we also bought a picnic dinner and a bottle of wine, deciding we’d still make the most of our short time at the shack. When it came time to turn off the highway onto a secondary road, I hauled out my series of serviettes, and made a terrible discovery: somehow the final napkin that completed the directions was not in my handbag. I don’t know if it had mysteriously escaped during the Latin dancing from the previous evening or if we had accidentally used and discarded it along the way, but we searched the car to no avail. It was absolutely pitch black outside. I tried to call Justin, but there was no cell phone reception.

What I did have was Justin’s nicely shaded drawing of his shack, so I drove slowly while James tried to match the napkin drawings to the various countryside structures we passed in the thick darkness. Just then what James saw was not a shack, but a huge kangaroo. “Look!” he exclaimed. “A huge kangaroo!”

I looked. And then, without any warning, hopping across the front of the car came a second huge kangaroo. It collided into the car with a thunk.

James and I sat parked on the road for a moment, stunned. Then I went outside to have a look. There was no sign of either kangaroo anywhere. I got out a flashlight and examined the front bumper, which seemed to be okay.

“We’re so lucky we were going slowly!” I said momentarily, hoping this trip still qualified as a “fun” adventure for James.

“The kangaroo you hit must have been on an adrenaline kick and kept on going,” James said. “It will probably die in the woods later on.” Yeah, I felt great.

We got back in the car and continued looking for the shack. Nothing along the road resembled Justin’s drawing, but we did find one which was roughly the same shape and size. Deciding it must be the right one, we went to the neighbours’ as Justin had instructed. The key was not there. Furthermore it seemed no one was home, so we picked open the lock on the outside of the shack with James’ Swiss army knife.

Inside, the shack wasn’t quaint, looking more like a dusty storage area for things like saddles and golf clubs (and no surfboards, which we thought was weird). There was a loft, though, as per Justin’s drawing, and we concluded that Justin’s idea of “rustic but beautiful” was different from ours.

The next day we did go to the beach, and indeed it was quite spectacular, though we couldn’t stay very long. When we got to Sydney, Justin rang me, wanting to know “how did we go” at the shack. I didn’t want to sound ungrateful and said it had indeed been rustic, and that I didn’t know Justin was a golfer.

“What?” he said, puzzled. “I’m not a golfer.”

“Oh. Well, I noticed a number of golf clubs at your shack.”

“But I don’t own any golf clubs.”

There was a long pause.

“Do you have any horse saddles?” I asked.

He didn’t. In fact, James and I had broken into an entirely different shack. Justin and James thought it was hilarious. I was a bit exhausted, but glad there were no hard feelings among anyone involved.

Except maybe the kangaroo.